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In the Shadow of Mt. TBR

Waves. Wind. Sun. Seagulls. Maglit berserking a flock of seagulls (NOT the 80s rock band made famous by their weird hair and referenced by Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction). It all proved too much for my ADD to overcome. I had dreams and visions of doing damage to my ARC-alanche pile! But, I only managed to read a little over 100 pages of Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle-Man McGinty Told Me.

I put the choice to Maggie, (who, btw, wasn’t at all interested in silly little books, even FB!) “Should I start with Uncle Chestnut? or Uncle Neil?” She said, “The one with the moon on its cover.” So, my book choice was made by a 10-year-old and based on the book cover… lol.

So, for those of you who’ve read it, I’m at the part where Mr. Pizza just got the visit from the man in uniform. The kids were playing kickball and the score was 42-0, but I don’t know if they’ll play on. I’m really enjoying it. It’s a book that reminds a grown-up what it felt like to be a kid, especially if you were the kind of kid like Tamara… a “trouble” kid. (I’m raising both hands, that’s definitely me). Reading this book, I find my mind wandering back to all those friends, especially the ones who were only there during the summer (Nick, Angel, Heather, and so many others… funny how, as a kid, we’re never concerned with last names!). I was seriously hoping they’d solve the McGinty on 3rd AND up to kick by putting in a “ghost man” like we did. Ghost man rules, though, your ghost men can only advance one base, they can’t go from 1st to home. But, alas! they threw in the giant as a pinch runner. Boo! :-D

Well, back to reading and I need a shower. I have sand between my toes, in my hair, and I’ll betcha it’s in my drawers, too! It gets everywhere. I swear, I have no idea how beaches survive if everyone brings home as much sand as we do! lol!

Untamed by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast ~ Book #4 of the House of Night series

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan

The Inheritance of Loss byKiran Desai

God Sleeps in Rwanda by Joseph Sebarenzi with Laura Mullane

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

Love Letters from Cell 92 by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Fruits Basket, volume 5 by Natsuki Takaya

Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star, volume 1 by Cain Kuga

Fruits Basket, volume 4 by Natsuki Takaya

It looked like the book fairy exploded all over! Gwen had got home before us and dumped the mail on my bed… lol. Adding to the book loot was a check for $100 and 4 coupons for free candy bars from Mars. Dang! I should go to the beach more often!

Okay, so I’ve decided to give in and join Beth Fish Read’s The Sookie Stackhouse Challenge. It would seem that I’m going to buy the books anyway… lol, even though I told myself I wanted to wait to see if I LIKED the first book first, I went ahead and bought the second book. So I’ll “goat head” as my mom always said, and join the challenge. There doesn’t seem to be any specific number for this challenge other than to read the books, so for now, I’ll just start off with the two on Mt. TBR.

Dead Until Dark

Living Dead in Dallas

I’ve also got True Bloodseason 1 in my Netflix queue, but I’m waiting to read the first book before getting them. I may be a little late to this ball, but I wanted to be sure. Funny, I’ve gone from scairt to join any challenges to being in five? Does the CDC know how contagious reading challenges are? What are they doing to help the victims? :-D

And, I found a Manga Challenge at Rhinoa’s Ramblings… Yay! LOL.. Now, if you told me this time last year that, not only would Ibe reading manga, but that I’d be joining a whole challenge devoted to it, I would’ve quit reading altogether. Funny how you can change in just a year.

The challenge is simple, just read 6 mangas in 2009. I don’t know if graphic novels are included in that, but since it’s a manga challenge, I’ll just stick with them. My list for the challenge is:

Fruits Basket, volume 1by Natsuki Takaya ~ I’m almost done with it already, and I have volumes 2-5 coming in the mail. I’m thoroughly enjoying it, and it seems the only book I can focus on right now, so if I’m not careful, I’ll end up just reading them and ignoring all the rest of the books I’m suppose to read.

Death Note, volume 1by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Psychic Academy, volume 1by Katsu Aki

Naruto, volume 1by Masashi Kishimoto

Vampire Hunter D, volume 1by Hideyuki Kikuchi and Yoshitaka Amano, which is still in the mail, but should be here today or tomorrow.

Cowboy Bebop, volume 1by Yutaka Nanten, et al. It’s not been mailed yet, and I’d actually requested it once before from PBS, but the person never sent it. So we’ll see if it gets here this time.

I chuckled at the writing on the cover of Cowboy Bebop, “Done the Right (to left) Way!” The one obstacle for Mags reading it on her own is the right-to-left, top-down, way you have to read it. She’s making me read Fruits Baskets out loud to her. AND I’ll be sooooooo glad to finally get through the mangas PAST the anime series. Every other page she gripes how the show is better and the book’s inferior. Bah! I’ve been secretly reading ahead of her so I can enjoy it… shh, don’t tell! I actually like the book better than the show, though, I admit, I read it with the voices from the show (and do the voices when reading it to her).

Let’s see… what else…. Oh, I just got an email the publisher that I’ll be getting my copy of Undiscovered Gyrl, and I’m sooooo excited for that! I’ll probably just drop everything and read it as soon as the packaging is ripped from it. I don’t get this excited for specific books very often, the last one I read straight from the envelope was Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank! Hopefully I’m not looking forward to it too much and the only way for it to go is down…

And now, some random things from my digital camera:

These are my gorgeous girls: Gwen, 15, on the left, Maggie, 10, in the middle, and Sammi, 16, on the right

Demure little Missy. How could you ever say NO to that face :-)

and whether it’s the new computer, windows vista or IE 7, there are a few things that just aggravate the crap out of me. For instance, those two pictures were a trial of patience to get them there. It doesn’t want to let me SEE what I’m doing in HTML mode, it keeps flipping back to the top. Some of the blogs won’t stay open for me to leave comments, usually the blogspot ones with the comment box embedded, so I’ve missed commenting on a couple, it seems to do it most to My Friend Amy‘s site. And it seems to have an issue with doing the open IDs. I keep having to re-enter “thekoolaidmom” in, until it finally decides publish. Is this something IE7 related? *growling sigh of frustration*